Dan’s journey began with a focus on high-performance computing, leading him to work on numerous initiatives that bridge scientific research and advanced technologies. His leadership at various institutions and his work as an NSF program officer have been instrumental in fostering collaboration between different disciplines, bringing together experts to solve complex challenges.

Beyond his technical prowess, Dan’s commitment to open science, research software sustainability, and data sharing is evident in his advocacy for the importance of transparent and accessible research. This dedication is evident through his involvement in creating policies that encourage open-source software, data sharing, and reproducibility, thereby shaping the future of scientific research.

Dan’s role as an educator at the University of Illinois further solidifies his impact. By mentoring students and collaborating with fellow researchers, he imparts his vast knowledge and enthusiasm for computational science to the next generation. This dedication to education ensures that his influence extends beyond his own work, leaving a lasting mark on the wider scientific community.

Advancing Research & Innovation

Dan stands as a luminary in the world of computational and data-enabled science. His technical expertise, commitment to open science, and passion for education collectively underscore his significant contributions to advancing research and innovation in the digital age. In this I Am HPC blog, Dan graciously shares with us.

Daniel S. Katz

Chief Scientist, NCSA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Daniel on LinkedIN

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Katz: I was excited as a graduate student to realize the power of computational simulation to model the physical world to make it understandable and predictable, and quickly realized that HPC was essential to using simulation for understanding of the world with detail and at scale.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Katz: Raising awareness about the importance of research software—that it must be maintained by people in order to continue to be useful over time, and that those people (many of whom are now known as Research Software Engineers or RSEs) need to have career paths in academia as well as national labs, and that these career paths depend on the use and impact of their work being seen, measured, and valued.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Katz: The commoditization of HPC at many levels, from the systems (starting with the Beowulf project and moving through GPUs) to the usage modalities (such as cloud and AI/ML).

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Katz: While there have been improvements during my career, we still need much more work on diversity, ranging from demographics (e.g., gender, ethnic background, etc.) to discipline (e.g., STEM vs. other fields) to opportunities (e.g., students in non-research-focused universities and community colleges). The best ideas aren’t limited to those who are currently in HPC, but also exist in those who aren’t in HPC and may not even be aware of it.

Dan Katz (left) with 2023 REU students and team members.

Dan Katz, Chief Scientist, NCSA (right) with Bill Gropp, Director, NCSA.

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Early in his career, Reed spent a lot of time working on activities tangentially related to inclusion. He volunteered in his community doing various things, such as coding sessions at a Girls Club in rural Massachusetts, visiting local universities, participating in career panels, and, in his words, “other generic let’s-fill-the-STEM-pipeline endeavors.” Reed “eventually understood that these things [were] not compatible with [his] personal strengths,” and that “the median software engineer can execute any of the aforementioned volunteer activities just as well as himself.”  

Instead, Reed opted toward finding an outlet aligned with his personal qualities. “There were times when I noticed that I had the skills, experience, and perspective to undividedly contribute,” he said. This revelation provided the motivating factor for his time away from the corporate world doing various HPC projects.

In 2021, Reed took a career break for a few months to move abroad and dedicate more time to things he is passionate about outside of work, including fitness, learning, and traveling to experience new cultures. During that time, he lived in East Africa doing volunteer work in HPC capacity-building. Reed built low-cost, low-powered HPC mini-clusters and created basic HPC learning content for local researchers, which he continues to do today. This experience also expanded Reed’s interest in the prevailing problem of accessibility and inclusivity within HPC.

“While a large entry barrier for today’s aspiring computer scientist and computational scientist is access to specialized equipment, this was not a problem during my undergraduate years studying computer science,” Reed explained. “When I first arrived at the University of Illinois, very few students had coding experience; almost no one owned a laptop; and specialized equipment, such as FPGAs, GPUs, and HPC clusters, were not commonly used by most engineers.”

According to Reed, this allowed everyone to be on approximately equal footing with respect to learning. 

“These days, it is very common for computer science students to begin their university studies after years of coding (by the way, I hate coding),” he said. “But, this is not necessarily true in HPC, where the resource gap is large and possibly growing. 

“I was fortunate to have both a university and research advisor that provided me with several resources to explore what was still a niche specialty at the time. This has motivated me to work on improving access—to equipment, people, resources, etc.—and removing as many barriers as possible for inclusion,” Reed continued. “For example, at the moment, I run a small but powerful HPC cluster from home and allow free compute time for researchers and students in rural areas around the world to use it as a sandbox for learning and debugging. The purpose of my volunteer work is to improve inclusivity for rural areas without access to HPC equipment, as I strongly believe there should be as few barriers as possible for joining, participating in, and contributing to HPC, as well as the wider fields of science and engineering.”

Lowering the Entry Barrier to HPC

For his I Am HPC profile, Isayah Reed further shares how he became part of this community and how he envisions its future.

Isayah Reed

Senior Technical Program Manager, HPC/AI Benchmarking, Microsoft

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Reed: During my college years, I was looking for a research advisor in computer architecture and was offered a project that looked into heterogeneous computing with GPUs. This was well before GPUs were a “thing.” Few people knew how to use them. I was fascinated by the problem statements and different trade-offs that come from offloading certain tasks to different computing units. My advisor, Maria Garzaran, recommended some HPC courses; I fell in love with the field; and I never looked back.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Reed: Outside of my day job, I try to focus my efforts on expanding accessibility and lowering the entry barrier to HPC. For years I’ve run a mini HPC cluster at home, to which I allow free access for several students, researchers, and enthusiasts in less developed countries. I try to help them learn and practice HPC or perform HPC research. I also donate my older equipment to various research teams and universities in these countries. Things like mid-tier GPUs and interconnect switches are typically inaccessible to people outside of western countries due to challenges such as price, maintenance, or availability. I strongly believe anyone should be able to enter HPC without needing access to an expensive government-funded or university supercomputer or spending a ton of money for time on a cloud provider.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Reed: Introduction of the dual core processor in the early 2000s. It completely changed the approach to software design and started the ascendance of parallel programming as a specialty. Even today, many applications have unnecessarily lower performance due to not making efficient use of available cores.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Reed: Tearing down walls between the different HPC sub-groups. We are missing opportunities to solve certain problems by failing to collaborate across different fields of study. I’m seeing, for example, that the AI people all know each other, while the fluid dynamics people also know each other. But, I don’t see much cross-collaboration between the two groups. There are some HPC computing issues that other sub-disciplines unnecessarily struggle with—issues that I, myself, could easily resolve in a few seconds. Yet, they rarely reach out for collaboration.

Who Is Your HPC Hero?

Send your suggestions to the SC23 Communications Team. Share their name and a brief description of why they’re your HPC hero.

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Early Formative Experiences

Williams’ introduction to business started in her early years when she passed time after school and late into the evening at her family’s music store. Her family later started a small computer business, and Williams headed off to college to study business in 1990. By 1992, the family business was growing, and Williams’ mom needed help, so Amy returned home to offer a hand. “That was a pivotal moment for me, making the decision to leave school and trusting the experience itself could get me where I needed to go,” says Williams. “I did finish my bachelor’s degree, but that was my introduction to the high-tech world.”

Amy williams

Owner and CEO, PIER Group

pier group

Back at home, Williams’ business education began in earnest where she quickly learned most aspects of the family computer business. “I started in purchasing and helped with shipping and receiving, then got involved in finance, and even spent time in the sales side of the business building relationships with customers and manufacturers,” Williams explains. Over time, she built a division of the family company that focused strictly on higher education and larger research institutions, which led her to HPC. Eventually, Williams, her husband and a small team decided to buy out the research and education division from her family and operate entirely on their own as the Partners In Education & Research (PIER) Group.

Following Heart & Soul

Williams says she was particularly interested in the education and research space for a few reasons. “One reason research is so near and dear to me is that our daughter was diagnosed with leukemia when she was eight. At that time, we went to St. Jude Children’s Hospital and learned about how hospitals were sharing data and how important it was to finding cures,” notes Williams. “My small team also recognized the unique nature of the education and research space in terms of the need for close working relationships with stakeholders, ranging from students to staff to faculty in any institution. Our team loved building those relationships and the computing environments that are helping solve interesting and important scientific challenges.” Today, PIER Group supports research and education facilities across the country. As an extension of its commitment to research organizations, PIER Group has contributed volunteers and hardware that facilitated the SCinet wireless network for three years running.

“Our team loved building those relationships and the computing environments that are helping solve interesting and important scientific challenges.”

Leading by Example

Notably, Williams’ early experiences in the family business had a profound impact on who she is today and how she leads. “While I didn’t have a career path in mind when I was younger, I learned about the value of working hard from a very young age and treating everyone as equals and as part of the team. I think if you interviewed our team, they would say I lead by example. And while I have the title of CEO today and own the business, I really do try to make sure everyone has a voice, and we all recognize one another as peers. It doesn’t matter if someone is in the back office or an engineer, helping each other and keeping our clients happy is what matters most and it’s important to me that everyone feels like they’re not just part of a team, but really part of a family. We’ve intentionally tried to stay lean and nimble so we don’t lose that.”

Matthew Magill, principal consultant, and Becky Schneider, vice president of programs and office management at PIER Group, both offered testament about Williams’ empowering and energizing leadership style. “PIER Group is a relatively small company, and Amy’s outward focus on employees and customers really does make it feel like a family. It’s a great change of pace compared to bigger corporate environments I’ve worked in and makes the challenges and problem solving in bigger projects more fun and rewarding,” explains Magill. Schneider echoed Magill’s sentiments, stating that William’s generosity and warmth are inspiring: “Amy really does want to see employees succeed, so she pushes us and challenges us and also never misses the opportunity to celebrate our wins and progress.”

Amy enjoys the outdoors and staying active in her free time.

Amy working with the PIER Group team picking up trash during one of their community outreach programs.

Working Beyond Barriers

Williams says she got to where she is today through a combination of hard work, serendipity, and curiosity. “It just kind of happened organically,” she says. But she also recognizes that the technology field still can be intimidating for women. Williams explains: “Last week, we were in Las Vegas for a big conference, and after a meeting in one of the conference rooms, we took a picture. It wasn’t until I left the room and looked at the picture that I thought about the fact that I had been the only woman in a room full of 16 men. I don’t know why that doesn’t give me pause or make me nervous, but I can see why it might make other women uncomfortable. There are areas in tech like engineering where you typically just don’t see as many women as men in many organizations.” 

To improve the balance in engineering, Williams thinks it’s important to continue encouraging young girls to pursue STEM programs. “I didn’t think about that as much in the past, but with a grandchild on the way, it’s something that’s got my attention,” says Williams. 

PIER Group itself is a certified Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) and home to a diverse team. When asked if she has any advice for women looking to get into the HPC industry, Williams encourages women to focus on their interests and not perceived limitations. “My advice is to go into any endeavor or opportunity focused on working hard and doing the right thing. I didn’t intend to be a CEO, but I always cared about my relationships. I think the combination of my hard work and focus on relationships helped me get where I am today. So, don’t overthink it when starting out. Just find an organization you like, work hard, be yourself and know that success isn’t going to come without hard work.”

“My advice is to go into any endeavor or opportunity focused on working hard and doing the right thing.”

Bautista, currently the group lead for the Operations Technology Group at NERSC, the primary scientific computing facility for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Elizabeth’s team aids in providing a central location for problem reporting, diagnosis, data collection, escalation, and resolution to maximize the scientific productivity of users. 

An Inclusivity Powerhouse

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Elizabeth: I didn’t know I was being interviewed. I was invited for a tour of the NERSC data center but ended up staying six hours and talking to a whole bunch of staff. When I finally got the tour, Mcurie, their latest supercomputer, was recently delivered, and I wasn’t sure if it was even in acceptance yet. However, when I saw the black Cray system with red decoration, it looked like a Christmas present. I had just graduated from my CS degree, and I did my final report on Seymour Cray and his innovations. Seeing one in person was well worth the six hours of talking to staff. Since I didn’t know I was being interviewed, I went home thinking, ‘Maybe someday I’ll get to work in HPC.’ The following month, after I filled out a bunch of paperwork, I got a job offer. Realizing I would get to work on a Cray system, how could I say no?

Elizabeth Bautista

Group Lead, Operations Technology Group, NERSC

Elizabeth on Linkedin

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Elizabeth: The development of our Operations Monitoring and Notification Infrastructure (OMNI) was a big step toward putting heterogenous data into one data warehouse to make it easier to corroborate data from multiple sources. The data is archived and curated with the intention of being used for years to come. In our experience, data is gathered and analyzed, but, once that is done, the data can potentially be abandoned. That doesn’t happen with OMNI. Once we start collecting it, we continue to collect it. We’ve had multiple use cases over the years that have either saved us cost, assisted us in making business decisions, or helped us improve our overall processes using data gathered by OMNI.

The work I performed to create opportunities for minority women in STEM, the work in diversity and inclusion through various committees, publications, and presentations, while they haven’t moved the needle significantly, I would hope that the ideas of fair hiring practices, seeking diverse candidate pools, taking a chance on potential talent rather than solid experience, community building for minority retention, and supporting the next generation of scientists and engineers in their careers, has made some impact in the community.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Elizabeth: As we look toward the acquisition of N10, NERSC’s next supercomputer, we have to consider innovations in chip technology. For years, the market was dominated by x86 and Arm. Today, companies must write code that will work with an x86 and Arm in order to compete in the market while paying millions to the big players who have kept their design proprietary.

A shift in the chip industry is happening now with RISC-V, a new open standard that can be used by any manufacturer, free of charge. Just as Bluetooth, Ethernet, and wi-fi open standards have revolutionized the industry and made these products interoperable with other products—even though they are made by different manufacturers—RISC-V can potentially change hardware used by HPC. RISC-V chips are now available in small products like earbuds, hard drives, and processors, with about 10 billion of these chips shipped within the last two years. As 3100 members across multiple industry organizations and academia collaborate on the standards through the RISC-V International, how soon will these chips become available as a competitor to the big established supercomputing companies providing an alternative to data centers? I am excited to see what the next supercomputer will be at NERSC, especially if it will be a RISC-V-based system.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Elizabeth: Minority women in HPC continue to be a small percentage, especially at the top positions. According to a 2021 study of the representation of women in HPC conferences, ‘women represent 10% of all HPC authors. Representation is particularly low at higher experience levels.’ This study counted all women. Breaking down the statistics to minority women, the number becomes three percent. Counting only Black, LatinX, American Indian, Pacific Islander, and Filipino, the number becomes less than .05%. When I attend an HPC technical conference, I look around and very rarely see my face in the crowd.

I’d like to see a more targeted recruitment into groups that represent minority women. We need to have more minority women in the candidate pool and hope the numbers allow them to get hired. We need to write more gender-neutral job descriptions and job postings to end the idea that women can’t apply to a job unless they are 100% qualified. Change interview practices to remove all biases, not just gender bias. Build transparency in salary policies to minimize gender based pay gaps. And, finally, create a community that supports women and their challenges to improve retention.

Conde also has a firm interest in bringing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and its colleague STEAM, which adds an “A” for “arts,” to the forefront, especially in building the inclusive and diverse workforce that will fuel HPC’s future.

An “A” for “Advocate”

Learn more about how Sidafa Conde is an “A” for “Advocate,” including his take on how HPC is a natural platform for helping young people realize their career goals, why he thinks exascale is so transformative, and why he proudly says, “I Am HPC.”

Sidafa Conde

Computational Scientist | STEM/STEAM Advocate

Sidafa on Linkedin

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Sidafa: During my time in the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded CSUMS program at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, I was first introduced to the world of scientific computing. Programs like CSUMS are designed to introduce students to new fields and give them the skills and knowledge they need to succeed, and it achieved just that for me. I had never really explored this area before, but I was fascinated by the incredible power and potential of these systems to process vast amounts of data and perform complex simulations. I changed my focus from accounting to computational math, and I’m happy with my decision.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Sidafa: I am very happy with my research, the publications, and the many awesome projects I’ve been fortunate to work in my career. However, I consider my work with STEAM the Streets on STEM/STEAM outreach and advocacy as my most important contribution to the computing community. Encouraging underrepresented youth to explore the world of computing and other STEM fields is crucial for creating a more diverse and inclusive workforce that benefits everyone. By simply sharing my knowledge and experience with young people, I hope to help inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers and ensure that everyone has the opportunity to pursue their dreams and make a meaningful impact in their chosen field.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Sidafa: The exascale milestone represents a remarkable achievement in the world of HPC/computing, made possible through the innovative work of mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists. The complex algorithms and numerical methods used in HPC and computing systems require a deep understanding of advanced mathematics and scientific computing, and the researchers who develop these technologies are often at the forefront of their fields. The exascale milestone is a testament to the tireless efforts of these researchers, who have pushed the boundaries of what is possible and paved the way for new discoveries and breakthroughs in a wide range of scientific disciplines. It’s truly awe-inspiring to witness the progress being made in this field. I, like many others, am excited to see what the future holds as we continue to push the boundaries of what is possible through advanced mathematics and engineering.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Sidafa: It’s crucial to reach out to diverse populations early on in high school to encourage their interest and involvement in various fields. By doing so, we can create a more inclusive and diverse workforce that benefits everyone. It’s essential to provide these students with resources and support, including mentorship, networking opportunities, and exposure to a range of career paths. Initiatives like these can help break down barriers and make it easier for underrepresented groups to pursue their dreams and achieve success.